Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Civic Learning Award For CA Public Schools - Initiatives & Programs (CA Dept of Education)

Civic Learning Award For CA Public Schools - Initiatives & Programs (CA Dept of Education):

Civic Learning Award For CA Public Schools

Recognizing the important role of public schools in preparing students for participation in our democracy.

What's New

The application deadline for the 2016-17 Civic Learning Award for Public Schools is now open. Applications are due on January 9, 2017. A committee comprised of representatives from the California Department of Education, Judicial Branch, and other business and education leaders will review the applications. Recipients will be announced in February 2017.

About the Civic Learning Award For CA Public Schools

The Civic Learning Award for public schools is co-sponsored by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye. We recognize and value the important role of public schools in preparing students for participation in our democracy, and have a partnership to support civic education in California. The awards are designed to both celebrate successful efforts to engage students in civic learning and to identify successful models that can be replicated in other schools.

The Civic Learning Award program has three levels: Awards of Excellence, Distinction, and Merit. Winners will be selected by a panel of experts based on the depth and breadth of their civic learning classes, clubs, and programs. Award of Excellence winners will receive a personal visit from Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye; Award of Distinction winners will be visited by an appellate court justice; and superior court judicial officers will provide recognition to schools receiving the Award of Merit. Each winner in the top two categories will receive a plaque and be invited to a California Gold Ribbon Award Banquet hosted by the California Department of Education.

We hope that you will take this opportunity to recognize the civic educators at your school and share this information with them.

These resources are also available on the California Courts Civics Education Web page

Civic Learning Award For CA Public Schools - Initiatives & Programs (CA Dept of Education):

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Tribune's so-called 'Schoolchildren's Bill of Rights'

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Tribune's so-called 'Schoolchildren's Bill of Rights':

The Tribune's so-called 'Schoolchildren's Bill of Rights'

Created with consent of the governed.

Chicago Tribune editors are calling for a "Schoolchild's Bill of Rights." As anyone familiar with the Trib might guess, Sunday's editorial has little to do with schoolchildren or their rights--except, that is, for their right to have their schools closed or privatized and their teachers debased.

The Trib's Bill of Rights includes not a single right for students, but instead includes things like:

Merit Pay for teachers, a oft-tried initiative which, according to researchers, produced no gains in measurable learning outcomes.
Using student test scores to evaluate teachers. Already the law in IL.
Widespread school "choice," the Trib's code word for school vouchers and privately-run charters. Trib editors write: "The public education industry should view ethnic, parochial or other private schools not as threats but as alternatives that enrich and diversify a community's educational offerings."
An end to collective bargaining, including the right to strike.
Parent Trigger Laws which enable a small and temporary group of parents to take over a school and hand it over to a private, for-profit company to operate. As you might expect, there's nothing about parents' right to opt-out of the plague of standardized testing.
Mass closing of black and Latino neighborhood schools and leaving boarded-up buildings to further blight communities or sell them off to condo developers. Again, too late. They're already doing it.

In other words, there's not much on this list that hasn't been going on for years in Chicago, without any positive results.

Trib editors' ideal schools chief.

The only thing surprising here is the Trib editors' use ofBill of Rights lingo to promote their extreme right-wing reform agenda. Remember it was the same board members who, in a previous editorial, called for CPS to be taken over by an autocrat with "Mussolini-like powers" to execute and implement that agenda.

I'm afraid that would leave Chicago kids with little more Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: The Tribune's so-called 'Schoolchildren's Bill of Rights':

The Network for Public Education Action and Seattle Education endorse Barbara A. Madsen for the Supreme Court of the State of Washington | Seattle Education

The Network for Public Education Action and Seattle Education endorse Barbara A. Madsen for the Supreme Court of the State of Washington | Seattle Education:

The Network for Public Education Action and Seattle Education endorse Barbara A. Madsen for the Supreme Court of the State of Washington

WA State Supreme Court Judge Barbara Madsen

The Network for Public Education Action is proud to announce its support for Barbara A. Madsen for the Supreme Court of the State of Washington. Madsen was first elected to the Washington State Supreme Court in 1992, and she has been re-elected every four years since then.

Barbara Madsen was unanimously elected Chief Justice twice by her peers. Yet, this election there is a strong movement to defeat her. That movement has drawn huge contributions from charter school supporters because Madsen authored the court’s 6-3 decision that found that charter schools were not entitled to public monies because they were directed by private boards instead of representatives elected by the community. Stand for Children, Reed Hastings and other proponents of charters have contributed to the campaign to defeat her and support her opponent, Republican Greg Zempel.

Although it is unusual for the Network for Public Education Action to endorse a judicial candidate, we believe that in this case an endorsement is warranted.

According to NPE Action Board President, Diane Ravitch, “Madsen is a judge of great integrity who cares deeply about justice and equity. As an organization devoted to strengthening and improving our nation’s public schools, we are grateful for Judge Madsen’s defense of the right of every child in Washington to an ample public education.”

Madsen will face her opponent, Zempel, on November 8.The Network for Public Education Action and Seattle Education endorse Barbara A. Madsen for the Supreme Court of the State of Washington | Seattle Education:

Karen Wolfe: Making Education Great Again - a rally in the Valley

Making Education Great Again - a rally in the Valley:

"Making education great again!"

Oh, edu-friends! Sometimes I can hardly keep a straight face at the forces trying to destroy public education. So, this time, I didn't even try. I hope you'll laugh, too

I wish you could have been in LA LA Land with me last weekend! I made a video for you in case you missed the charter rally in the valley!

Now that headlines from across the nation, of the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, the Network for Public Education, and the ACLU have all made clear—and John Oliver made hilarious—that the charter emperor has no clothes, the California charter lobby took its carnival to its favorite corporate reform playground, Los Angeles. Pacoima to be exact. The last bastion of that little inconvenience of democracy, the largest school district in the country that still holds school board elections, LAUSD.
Edu-friends, I thought I had stumbled into a Trump rally. It really made me feel like these folks are our only chance at making education great again.

“When I say ‘parent’ you say ‘power’!” Corporate reform champion and LAUSD board member Monica Garcia shouted.

There were t-shirts with catchy phrases like “Fierce Learner”. Although I don’t know who let the guy slip in with an off-message t-shirt that read, “Public education is not for sale”. Ha!

There were t-shirts with metaphors like Phoenix! I could almost smell the smoke rising from the ashes. Although, let’s face it, that might have been the fresh aroma of bull****. Some hoped you’d forget they were any metaphor at all. Could the M.I.T. t-shirts actually, officially, almost be connected to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Oh, who cares? Details, details!

The point is, these kids have a great shot at getting into a school like that because they received extra credit for attending this rally! Several of them told me so.

There were other ways to tell this was no ordinary rally. It was literally on—wait for it—AstroTurf! That’s right, edu-friends. Mere grass isn’t good enough for these disrupters!

It was like a carnival!

Just listen to this charter school principal shriek--I mean lead-- the crowd.

“You have MORE accountability for MORE student learning! Can we do it? YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! SI, SE PUEDES [sic],” she cheered.

Only 5% of California’s students attend charters, but this rally looked like the whole world had descended to celebrate charters! They boasted 3000 attendees. The cop I asked estimated 900-1000.

So how did these folks get here? Nothing is left to chance by the charter lobby. They had buses! But it was billed as a march, so a march it will be! Buses Making Education Great Again - a rally in the Valley:

“It matters to me who becomes the next U.S. Education Secretary…” – Cloaking Inequity

“It matters to me who becomes the next U.S. Education Secretary…” – Cloaking Inequity:

“It matters to me who becomes the next U.S. Education Secretary…”

Will I see you in New York next week? I’ll be trekking to the East Coast for a day to attend the Journey for Justice conference at SUNY Old Westbury.

After the conference at SUNY, thousands are expected to demonstrate at the Sept. 26th presidential debate in protest of public education cuts in African American and Latino communities across the nation.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to watch the march and debate on my five hour flight back to Sacramento on Jetblue.

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.

This from Journey for Justice and Jitu Brown.

CHICAGO – A national coalition of parents, students, teachers and activists have vowed to travel to Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, on Monday, September 26th, and join with thousands of other people who will protest the first presidential debate due to cuts in public education and the impact on students of color. Activists, led by the Journey for Justice Alliance, have demanded Democratic nominee Sec. Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump release their respective K-thru-12 education platforms and meet with school leaders prior squaring off.

A coalition led by the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) with more than 40,000 members from 24 cities across the US is galvanizing. Organizers say they will release a seven-point platform that tackles school privatization, the school-to-prison pipeline, standardized testing and a myriad of other failed education interventions that have led to massive school closings, charter proliferation and other schemes that have not improved education outcomes in urban communities.

“Our voices have been locked out of any discussion about public education during the race to the White House,” said Jitu Brown, national director J4JA. “Both Clinton and Trump have closed their ears to those of us who have protested, boycotted, waged hunger and teacher “It matters to me who becomes the next U.S. Education Secretary…” – Cloaking Inequity:

Thanks Gov. Snyder: Mother of Four Scammed in Flint Water Disaster

Thanks Gov. Snyder: Mother of Four Scammed in Flint Water Disaster

FLINT WOMAN Scammed: Mother of 4, Tammy Loren has only a few years to live because of Flint's water disaster. Governor Snyder switched the source of tap water for Flint residents to the polluted Flint River, which caused many citizens to become ill. But, that didn't stop one company from tricking Tammy Loren to promote their water purifier company. One New Jersey woman, Ginny LaConte Caroselli, who markets water systems, allegedly opened a Go Fund Me Account and surprised Tammy Loren with a promise to deliver a water purifier to her family to remove excess lead and other contaminants from the dying woman's body. Donations were requested to buy water purifiers for Flint. Tammy Loren shared the GoFundMe account with everyone. The purifier never came. The company says they did donate a machine to the community, and that the Go Fund Me money was used for airfare and hotel for the company representatives.

From Tammy Loren's Facebook page:

It's absolutely carzy how a person can become so evil! Knowing I have less then 5 years to live and my entire family is sick! We were promised a donation of the Kangen Water Machine but apparently we salvaged the#ClearWater4Flint event! But yet where is the go fund money raised? They slipped and admitted it all went to their airfare hotel stay and food and transportation. Ginny LaConte Caroselli Syrah Scott with The Be You Campaign Jenni Marie and Umi of brookland advantages and Michele Dudley Evans apparently would rather continue to see our children suffer in pain daily and Ken as well and see me die since I only have less then years anyway. Karma is a BITCH!! Thank god my hands are 100% clean! Come in Flint and commit fraud how dare you!!

Pictures provided along with original post

https://m.facebook.com/story.php…

CURMUDGUCATION: USED, Pay for Success and Stupid Pre-K Plans

CURMUDGUCATION: USED, Pay for Success and Stupid Pre-K Plans:

USED, Pay for Success and Stupid Pre-K Plans

The United States Department of (Privatizing) education is touting another boneheaded idea, this time aimed at preschool and using yet one more unproven approach-- pay for success.

What is that, exactly? Here's the explanation from the USED FAQ page:

Pay for success (PFS) is an innovative contracting and financing model that aims to test and advance promising and proven interventions while paying only for successful outcomes or impacts for families, individuals, and communities. Through a PFS project, a government (or other) entity enters into a contract with an Investor to pay for the achievement of concrete, measurable outcomes for specific people or communities. Service providers deliver interventions to achieve these outcomes. Payments, known as Outcomes Payments, are made only if the intervention achieves those outcomes agreed upon in advance. The government (or other) entity makes Outcomes Payments to repay Investors for the costs of services (and sometimes other projects costs) plus a modest return. Ideally, Outcomes Payments amount to a fraction of the short- and long-term cost savings to the government (or other) entity resulting from the successful outcomes.

Pay for Success is the zippier nom de guerre of Social Impact Bonds. If you want my "for dummies" explanation, you can look here. If you want a grown-up's fully detailed explanation, complete with sad history, I recommend this piece by Tim Scott.

The basic idea is this. The government gets an investor to foot the bill for what's supposed to be a government program. Then if the task is completed successfully for less than the government had set aside to do the task, the government reimburses the investor for the program costs and as a bonus, the taxpayers' "savings" are magically transformed into the private investor's "earnings." It is this big time version of telling the babysitter, "Here's ten bucks to get supper. You can keep whatever change there is."

Let me rattle off just a quick list of why this is a dumb way to do business in the-- well, it's actually a dumb way to do just about any sort of business, but let's stick to why it's a dumb way to do business in the education sector.

1) It literally sets the interests of the contractor against the interests of the children. Every dollar that the contractor spends on children is a dollar the contractor doesn't get to keep.

2) It builds a system around doing the absolute least we can get away with. "Spend the least you can get away with," say Social Impact Bonds, "to get the lowest acceptable results." Nobody tells their CURMUDGUCATION: USED, Pay for Success and Stupid Pre-K Plans:

Students have the right to demand receipts for pledging allegiance - The Hechinger Report

Students have the right to demand receipts for pledging allegiance - The Hechinger Report:

Students have the right to demand receipts for pledging allegiance

Don’t blame high school football players for desecrating our secular religion

Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi’s Stadium on September 12, 2016 in Santa Clara, California. Photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

It’s not too much to sit out a national anthem when members your ethnic group can be shot dead in the street.

Many who have been critical of high school football players representing NFL quarterback Colin Kaeperneck’s protest would rather have blacks and other marginalized groups observe the United States flag as second-class citizens than for us to demand the unalienable rights we’re allegedly afforded.

Famous football players, writers and armchair critics argue that Kaeperneck-style protests to state sanctioned murder at the expense of our national rituals are counterproductive. To be “patriotic” by way of observance of national rituals is the most principled and effective way to bring attention to police brutality and build community. The flag and its associated rituals of observance allow everyone to protest, and that allowance is the community glue that binds us all. Herein lies the belief in the mother country – patriotism – that keeps us together.

Those who criticize high school players’ modest gestures of protest fail to recognize that second-class citizenry degrades real patriotism. When life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can be taken away because you’re not considered an authentic member of America, the ritual of pledges are purely symbolic. A reasonable amount of justice is required for authentic patriotism. Protesters are simply demanding America to do its part.

Most often, detractors wield patriotism to delay or deny the just allocation of unalienable rights and other political goods that black people are owed.

Now, flag waving decriers are facing their worst nightmare: Disaffected young people are demanding receipts for revering the flag.

Join the conversation later on Andre Perry’s radio show, “Free College,” hosted Tuesdays on WBOK1230 in New Orleans at 3pm Central/4pm Eastern 504.260.9265.

Black people can’t eat, learn from, be housed by or be protected by American symbolism. Just economic, educational and housing Students have the right to demand receipts for pledging allegiance - The Hechinger Report:

Equity gap in California: what the new test scores tell us | EdSource

Equity gap in California: what the new test scores tell us | EdSource:

Equity gap in California: what the new test scores tell us

Linda Darling-Hammond Leib Sutcher

When the new Smarter Balanced test scores (part of California’s new assessment system known as CAASPP) came out last month, Californians engaged in what is now a time-honored routine — noting that scores inched up but large equity gaps remain.

Differentials by race, ethnicity, income, language background and disability status have become a common feature of the landscape, like our dry riverbeds and brush fires in the summertime — worrisome but not really viewed as solvable.

Thus, we typically have a “Home Alone” moment when we register wide-eyed shock as test score gaps are announced and then go about our business for another year without a purposeful analysis and determination to change the status quo

We believe it is important to dive into the data and take stock of what we can learn in order to identify the implications for educational improvement in the state and think carefully about next steps. This takes some doing, however. The state currently reports trends in terms of the proportion of students who “meet the standard,” a cut point set for each grade level, but does not focus on trends in the actual scores the students receive. (These scores are on a scale from 2000 to 3000 on the tests.) Users must go into the data set to calculate these trends themselves across test areas, years, and student subgroups.

Analyzing these trends in actual scores is especially important for understanding the performance of groups scoring well below or well above the “standards met” cut point used for reporting the data.

The Learning Policy Institute looked more closely at these data, tallying scale scores for student subgroups for each year while weighting scores from each grade level and year by the number of test takers to measure how much “growth” this year’s test scores showed compared to last year. We found some surprises offering both good news and bad news — and some clear indicators of where the state needs to dig in and work harder.

First the bad news: As the graphs below show, students with disabilities score low and show little growth. And many historically underserved racial/ethnic groups score well below white and Asian students and are gaining less rapidly, which contributes to a widening achievement gap. This includes African-American students, where the news is the worst, followed by Native American and Pacific Islander students.

Graph showing growth in scale score by subgroup in English. — SOURCE: LEARNING POLICY INSTITUTE
Note: Average scale scores are calculated by taking a weighted average of mean scales scores at each grade level according to the number of students with test scores. The numbers on the growth axis refer to the average gain in the number of scale score points for that group between 2015 and 2016.

And all of the news is worse in mathematics than in English language arts where both average scores and average growth are lower overall and for each Equity gap in California: what the new test scores tell us | EdSource:

Louisiana Educator: Louisiana Accountability System Changes to Reflect Political Goals

Louisiana Educator: Louisiana Accountability System Changes to Reflect Political Goals:

Louisiana Accountability System Changes to Reflect Political Goals

Image result for Louisiana Accountability System Changes to Reflect Political Goals

Note to Readers: The following post by Herb Bassett traces the history of test-based accountability in Louisiana from 1999 to the present. Mr Bassett's analysis demonstrates that the grading and ranking of our schools and teachers based on student test scores is purely arbitrary and is constantly being manipulated by our State Superintendent to produce whatever results suits his objective at the time.

Several years ago reformers chose to portray a large number of our schools as failures so that there would be an excuse for "reforms" such as school privatization and reductions in teacher job protections. Now that the reformer policies have been in effect for a number of years, the testing data is being manipulated to demonstrate "improvement". But such alleged "improvement" is not supported by the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests (NAEP). These test results show that since 2005, Louisiana students have achieved only small improvements in national test results, and have actually lost ground compared to all other states in three out of the 4 categories tested.

Test based accountability in Louisiana has failed to make any significant improvement in student performance. At the same time our students' futures have become more limited because of the increasing emphasis on college prep for-all, at the expense of vocational prep opportunities.

The scapegoating of teachers for low student performance that has been an inherent part of the reforms has demoralized and de-professionalized the teaching profession in Louisiana. Many highly respected teachers have retired early. Meanwhile the natural joy of teaching and learning has been replaced by a constant, dull, non productive, test-prep exercise with no end in sight.

Mr Bassett's analysis

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires us to revamp our school accountability system. As we decide what changes to make, we should examine our current status, take lessons from the history of our statewide tests, and recognize how politicized our accountability system has become. It is imperative that we bring nuanced understanding to the decision making process.

History warns that the results of a single summative measure can be shaped by political considerations.

My hope here is to restore history that John White has removed from public view and reveal the current strategy to produce an illusion of ever-improving student performance by changing the metrics. This linkis to the GEE 21, LEAP/iLEAP, LAPARCC and EOC data I compiled for this study.

I. The politicization of the accountability system:

Louisiana set up its accountability system even before No Child Left Behind. The first school performance Louisiana Educator: Louisiana Accountability System Changes to Reflect Political Goals:

U.S. Department of Education Finally Begins to Regulate Charters: Thank You Sen. Sherrod Brown | janresseger

U.S. Department of Education Finally Begins to Regulate Charters: Thank You Sen. Sherrod Brown | janresseger:

U.S. Department of Education Finally Begins to Regulate Charters: Thank You Sen. Sherrod Brown

Image result for big education ape sherrod brown

Charter Schools are defined by their freedom from regulation and oversight, but that freedom has been so regularly abused by unscrupulous operators that it seems the U.S. Department of Education is finally deciding to crack down, under pressure in this case from Ohio’s U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.

Three months ago, on June 20, 2016, Senator Brown wrote a letter to John King, now U.S. Secretary of Education, demanding increased oversight of a large grant—$71 million—the federal Department of Education made to Ohio on September 28, 2015 to expand charter schools. The grant application had been written by David Hansen, who, by September, had already been fired by the Ohio Department of Education for hiding the abysmal academic record of the state’s so-called “dropout recovery schools” and omitting their scores from a system he was creating as the Ohio Department prepared to begin holding charter schools more accountable. Hansen had also bragged in his federal grant application that Ohio had already begun more aggressively regulating charters. After the U.S. Department of Education awarded Ohio the $71 million grant at the end of September 2015, however, it was pointed out that the Ohio legislature had not yet passed the regulations for which Hansen (in July) had given the state credit. (The Ohio Legislature later adopted the most basic and minimal charter school oversight when it passed Ohio House Bill 2 on October 7, 2015).

When Ohio Senator Brown wrote to U.S. Secretary John King in June, 2016, the $71 million Ohio grant had been put on hold for months, as the U.S. Department of Education investigated Ohio’s dealings with charter schools. In his June 20 letter, Senator Brown wrote: “In your November 2015 response letter to the members of the Ohio Congressional delegation, you outlined a number of steps ED has taken and will continue to take to verify the accuracy and completeness of ODE’s grant application. I appreciate these steps, but more must be done to provide order to the state’s chaotic charter school sector. In light of this report, I ask that you examine the performance of Ohio charter schools who have received CSP (federal Charter Schools Program) grants to determine whether grant recipients are failing or closing at a higher rate than those in other states and how the academic performance of CSP grant recipients in Ohio compares to CSP grant recipients nationwide. I further ask that when Ohio U.S. Department of Education Finally Begins to Regulate Charters: Thank You Sen. Sherrod Brown | janresseger:

Teaching Advanced Placement Composition: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching Advanced Placement Composition: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching Advanced Placement Composition: Technology Integration

Room 409 at Los Altos High School in the south San Francisco Bay area is one of the most spacious for an academic subject —nearly the size of two regular classrooms–I have ever seen in the many schools I have visited over the years. I marveled at its carpeting, recliner chairs near the teacher’s desk and horseshoe arrangement of 3- and 4-desk clusters facing a table in the center of the room where Michael Moul, a 12 year veteran teacher, presides over his AP class.

Well over six feet tall, the stocky and goateed Moul is wearing a blue shirt, and dark slacks. He looks out on the 32 students in the room. He is also faculty adviser for the Talon, the school newspaper. Twelve desktop computers sit on the ledge below a wall and tall windows in the rear and side of the room that Talon staff use.

Los Altos High School is a Bring-Your-Own-Device school. * The high school district adopted BYOD two years ago for its three schools after teacher- and administrator-initiated pilot projects established that well over half of the students had laptops or tablets they could use for their classes and enough teachers were sufficiently skilled to integrate the hardware and software into their daily lessons. For students who lack a device, forget theirs, or if one dies suddenly in school, students can easily get a device elsewhere in the school. Teachers decide how to weave technologies into their lessons; there is no district prescribed one-best-way for teachers to follow.

The lesson I observed on September 6, 2016 is the final part of a four and a half week unit on the Narrative Essay that began with the first day of school on August 15th.. In this unit, Moul spent the first two weeks of the semester on Teaching Advanced Placement Composition: Technology Integration | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Business groups warn Regents on Common Core | Crain's New York Business

Business groups warn Regents on Common Core | Crain's New York Business:

Business groups warn Regents on Common Core

Opponents of tougher education standards cannot be placated, so state education officials should not bother trying, a letter to the Board of Regents argues

Image result for New York's version of Common Core,

As the state Board of Regents prepares to tweak New York's version of Common Core, business groups and other supporters of the tougher educational standards are urging the board not to dumb them down to appease opponents.

Critics of Common Core will never be appeased, so there is no point in trying—and limiting students' potential in the process, the supporters argue in a letter being sent to the board Tuesday.

"Opponents of the standards...won’t be satisfied with thoughtful changes and improvements," writes High Achievement New York, a statewide coalition of educators, parents, civic leaders, employers and advocates. "They are only interested in a full repeal of the standards or an outright moratorium—without considering the consequences."

One organization, Stop Common Core in New York State, calls the standards "a federal takeover of the [sic] education."

Common Core is a national set of standards, but the federal government does not require states to adopt them. However, it does incentivize adoption, on the premise that all children in the U.S. should be expected to attain the skills and abilities to prosper in the economy of today and tomorrow, given the impact of automation and foreign competition. States and individual school districts and schools are to design their own curriculums to reach the standards, although Common Core is often mistakenly viewed or erroneously portrayed as a national curriculum.

Business groups tend to support Common Core because too many schools have been producing graduates not prepared for the modern workforce, which is less reliant on manufacturing—and the manufacturing jobs that remain require more knowledge and expertise than they once did.

The opposition is a mix of odd political bedfellows, including conservatives who do not want federal interference in education, and liberals who associate Common Core with standardized testing (although the controversy over testing predated Common Core by many years).

But opponents gained traction in New York, particularly in affluent suburbs, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded by suspending plans to link teacher performance reviews to Common Core tests and promising other changes, although he remained a supporter of the idea of Common Core and of standardized testing in general.Business groups warn Regents on Common Core | Crain's New York Business:

HANY Letter Regents

Business groups warn Regents on Common Core | Crain's New York Business:

Audio: Envisioning a 'leaner' LA Unified HQ, superintendent asks for plan to cut central office by 30 percent | 89.3 KPCC

Audio: Envisioning a 'leaner' LA Unified HQ, superintendent asks for plan to cut central office by 30 percent | 89.3 KPCC:

Envisioning a 'leaner' LA Unified HQ, superintendent asks for plan to cut central office by 30 percent

Superintendent Michelle King has asked managers in the Los Angeles Unified School District's central offices to submit plans outlining how they would slash their departments' budgets by 30 percent in the coming fiscal year, according to a memo obtained by KPCC.

For now, it's just a planning exercise. But top district officials say the aggressive cost-cutting target — the reductions would total more than $112 million if fully implemented — falls in line with King's vision for a slimmed-down headquarters and a district in which school sites are given greater control over their own budgets.

"It's not just another 5 percent drill," said L.A. Unified Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly. (Some central office departments took a 5 percent cut this year, saving a total of $11 million.)

For managers to hit their cost-saving targets of 30 percent, they couldn't simply close open positions or pick off other similar low-hanging fruit in their budgets. The idea behind the exercise, Reilly said, is to prompt central office mangers to completely rethink how they operate as declining enrollment in L.A. Unified kinks the district's revenue stream.

"You can’t get to 30 percent without really reinventing yourself or basically talking about consolidation in other types of functions," Reilly said.

"I call it an exercise," Reilly added later, "but this is, in reality, something we will be going through … to look at how do we work effectively with a smaller, leaner kind of headquarters."

L.A. Unified’s own projections show an operating shortfall of up to $663 million in the 2017-18 budget year. If that holds true, the long-term fiscal stabilization planapproved in June calls for $60 million in cuts to central office departments next year.

That grim projection, however, does not factor in new revenues the district could see Audio: Envisioning a 'leaner' LA Unified HQ, superintendent asks for plan to cut central office by 30 percent | 89.3 KPCC:

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016